Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, has accused the US government of hacking into its servers since 2009.
The accusation was made in a post on the company’s official WeChat account, which also accused the US of launching cyberattacks against other Chinese companies and research institutions.
“In 2009, the Office of Tailored Access Operations started to infiltrate servers at Huawei’s headquarters and continued conducting such surveillance operations,” the post read.
The US Department of State has yet to comment on the Chinese accusation.
The post further said that China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center extracted spyware called ‘Second Date.’
The ‘Second Date’ malware is “cyber-espionage malware developed by the US National Security Agency, which operates covertly in thousands of networks in many countries around the world.”
With this spyware, “the US had obtained control over tens of thousands of devices and stolen a substantial amount of high-value data,” the ministry said in the post.
Amid the escalating rivalry between the US and China, earlier this month, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan revealed that the Joe Biden government seeks to know more about the new, ‘made in China’ Huawei chipset used in the Mate 60 Pro smartphone.
Later, the Xi Jinping government reportedly barred officials from using Apple iPhones at work. The government later took a U-turn, saying it allows all foreign devices, including Apple, to continue to be used by people in the country.
Now, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has said that there is no evidence to suggest that Chinese conglomerate Huawei can produce smartphones with advanced semiconductors at scale.
